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Friday, September 16, 2016

The Finish Schooling System: "Finnish First" excerpt

In just 30 years, Finland transformed its school system from one that was mediocre and inequitable, to one that consistently produces some of the world's best students, while virtually eliminating an achievement gap. And they do it without standardized testing. Dan Rather Reports airs Mondays at 8pm ET on AXS TV.

You Tube reply:

Finland is in the top 5 in the world in producing the best students. "And the do it without standardized testing." Wake up, common core advocates!

Some hard line conservatives passionately believe in the Protestant work ethic. This is even taken into schools where children get a daily grilling in a pseudo military type environment. Some Far Eastern countries take this to extremes and put children through punishing long days turning them into automations. The children have very little play time and get far too much homework thrown in on top. I read once how some of these children would commit suicide and that their hard line teachers would say good riddance because this meant they were no good anyway. Social Darwinian extremism. These teachers are the ultra authoritarians, the fascists.

But what if it all so unnecessary because the Finish system shows us that there is a better way. The hard liners won't like it because they want to punish people. Punish people because they like to relax and enjoy life. A Bonobo lifestyle would suite me down to the ground.

10 comments:

The main problem with education nowadays is that is yet based fundamentally on the educational system of the industrial revolution. Rote learning has way too much protagonism (hence testing for acquired 'knowledge').

It isn't pretty much until grad education (even post-grad, in some cases) until the focus is changed. Unfortunately we haven't come with a better model yet, for generalised use.

Insistence on rote learning nowadays makes no sense, the computers are infinitely better at memorisation and searching of data (that's where next waves of automation over the next decades will happen, in anything related to this). This made sense in last century before electronic gadgets were widely available, nowadays, no more.

Some hard line conservatives passionately believe in the Protestant work ethic.

But not the Bible since:

Unless the Lord builds the house,They labor in vain who build it;Unless the Lord guards the city,The watchman keeps awake in vain.It is vain for you to rise up early,To retire late,To eat the bread of painful labors;For He gives to His beloved even in his sleep. Psalm 127:1-2

Finland kept a system which Sweden throw away in favour for a privatized school system. Now Sweden is way down in ranking and the proposed solution for that is more of measuring and bureaucracy which those who lobbied for the privatized school system said they wanted less of.

As someone who has lived in Finland and spent plenty of time with their educated elites, I find most of these articles about her education system—especially from a USA perspective—to be almost laughable,1) The idea that Finns don't face standardized testing is just wrong. In fact, they have this crazy-difficult test before they graduate from high school that requires them to know essentially everything they learned. Seniors get out of school in January so they can prepare for this mega-test in June. And virtually all testing consists of essay questions—no multiple-guess.2) Because the adults in the society have been through this rigorous process, there is a performance expectation that students understand. Finns go to school to learn something.3) Between the good working conditions and the high status, teachers tend to be very high performers. The clueless teachers so common in USA are unheard of in Finland.4) The Finns are extremely proud of their schools. In fact, the tourist board regularly arranges tours for foreigners so they can see what works.5) The Finns borrowed pedological ideas from all over the place. Many of the best ideas came from the old DDR. Who knew?6) The Finns don't stop learning. Every winter nearly half the population has signed up for some class to expand their range of knowledge and interest.

The outcome is just spectacular. I was most impressed by the seemingly common ability of the Finns to distill complex ideas into essential points. They would ask me a question and I would give what I thought was a profound and complex answer. Then would come the, "Oh, you mean" and then my own ideas were said back to me in two very pithy sentences. I would shake my head in amazements and say, "Yes, exactly, that is what I mean." One day a 15 y.o. young man did this (in perfect English) and then I knew, the Finns cannot possibly be exaggerating when it comes to the pride they take in their schools.

But it hasn't been since the poor, the least so-called creditworthy, are forced* to lend (a deposit is legally a loan) to depository institutions to lower the borrowing costs of the most so-called creditworthy, the rich.